My aim has been, not only to go once more through the task of Albert Durer, but to execute it also on an extended scale. - Adolphe Quetelet

I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence.

The progressive development of moral and intellectual man has scarcely occupied their [scientists] attention; nor have they noted how the faculties of his mind are at every age influenced by those of the body, nor how his faculties mutually react.

Hitherto, the science of Man has been limited to researches... respecting some of its laws, to results deduced from single or insulated observations, and to theories often based on mere glimpses; and these constitute pretty nearly all the materials it possesses.